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Ask HN: I'm a good programmer, I know nothing about marketing. Where do I start?

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Re: Ask HN: I'm a good programmer, I know nothing about marketing. Where do I start?

#21
Who is your customer? Why should they use your product over alternatives to solve their problem / improve their life?

This is the realm of product management and product marketing as much as general "marketing".

Read The Mom Test. Follow what it says to do practical user research, so that you can effectively target your niche within time management / productivity tools.

https://www.momtestbook.com/

After that, here's a good video from a YC person about launches, and why you should think of them as things to do over and over as opposed to just once:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xU050kMbHM

Re: Ask HN: I'm a good programmer, I know nothing about marketing. Where do I start?

#23
Rather than watching a bunch of marketing courses that’ll probably be covering content that is painfully obvious (trust me on this one lol), you’d be better served picking up a book like “The Personal MBA” to understand the important concepts in marketing (among all the other core business elements).

I could write a lot about marketing, but for the most part it all comes down to one thing: really understanding your target customer (what they want, what they do today, what type of people they tend to be, etc.) and creating the messaging and material that speaks to them. Don’t fall in the trap of talking a bunch about all of your cool features. Instead, focus on how with your tool, your customers can become the hero they always wanted to be (or at least show them that their life will be better).

If you can do that, you’re doing marketing and doing it a lot better than most.

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